Bureau of Sabotage
Empire Logistics Supply Chain Infrastructure
Capitalism relies on an integrated infrastructure of production clusters and transportation networks—comprised of ports, warehouses, rail lines, highways, pipelines, information grids and investment vehicles—in order to produce and circulate commodities. The physical nodes are arrayed in clusters of factories, warehouses, refineries, logistics services, and retail, all tied together by maritime, rail, trucking, pipeline and telecom networks. This global “factory without walls” allows capitalists to scour the planet for the cheapest and most compliant labor, externalizing costs of its maintenance onto the working class. These networks generate flows of commodities and information with ever-increasing speed, as the system strives for just-in-time production and inventory-less distribution for a unified global market. Empire Logistics is a mapping project that demonstrates how these nodes, clusters, networks, corridors and flows are interconnected within an integrated system of production, distribution and consumption.